Inaugural Lecture - Professor Win Rampen

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We use energy every day for everything. For heat and light, transport and industrial processes but also, very importantly, to make fertiliser to grow food.

Life would be very different without the vast supply of energy that we, as a society, currently consume without much thought.

But most of this energy was laid down by the sun long before we existed, and we are now digging it up and using it at a tremendous rate - a million year's stored energy for one year of current planetary consumption!

This needs to change! - we need to get reliable, cost effective technology in place so that we can live off the sun's energy on a sustainable basis.

Unfortunately the sun doesn't shine all the time. There is also a huge seasonal variation in its output. The technical challenge to capture and store the sun's energy, so that it can be supplied when we need it, is formidable.

The lecture will address this challenge and explore some of the more promising solutions that are being developed across the globe.